One of the most often heard complaints from users looking to migrate to Linux is that there are no good accounting applications. To be fair, there is a degree of truth in that concern. At least there was, until now.

How much does it cost to develop a Linux distriubution? The Linux Foundation reckons that if Fedora 9 had to be built from scratch today it would cost US$10.8 billion. In a new whitepaper the foundation has based this on the amount of code in the operating system and the resources needed to reproduce it. The paper says that the Linux kernel itself would have cost close to US$1.5bn to develop. Check out the whitepaper for some interesting reading.

Released just over a week ago OpenOffice.org 3.0 looked to be a dead cert for inclusion in Ubuntu 8.10, due out next week. The Ubuntu team has decided, however, to hold back the latest version of the office suite until the April 2009 release of Jaunty. Ubuntu’s Colin Watson explains to Tectonic why this decision was taken.

A day ahead of Ubuntu’s planned RC release of Ubuntu 8.10, Ubuntu community manager Jono Bacon has announced his own latest release: A heavy metal album released under a Creative Commons licence. Denied by Reign is part of Bacon’s Severed Fifth project. Download the album and read the Ars Technica interview.